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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.necronomicon,talk.religion.newage,alt.magick.moderated
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva)
Subject: Az0th: Re: Necronomicon
Date: 17 Nov 1995 16:44:33 -0800

[from alt.magick: azoth@netcom.com (Az0th)]

93 XoMBi,

: The Necronomicon is a very interesting book...my friend is 
: actually planning on using it...what should I do?

You might start by asking your friend "For what?" and "Why?"  };-]

All the books I posess called Necronomicon are interesting in their various
ways. The Hay Nec. is an admitted hoax and fun to read besides, and if your
friend wants to use this one I shouldn't worry too much about it. Giger's
Nec. is a picture-book drawn from Giger's own nightmares, and very much
admired by those able to appreciate such things. OTOH, the commonly available
pocket paperback Nec. by Simon, is a real grimoire written by a practicing
magician, and as such is quite capable of being worked by someone with the
requisite skill, insight or 'luck', with results varying markedly with the
ability and intention of the operator. It's both more and less than it
appears, and my opinions on this subject are worth exactly what you pay.

There are at least three large classes of people whose advice on
Necronomicons you may safely ignore: literary critics, armchair magicians
and Assyriologists.

Literary critics and Lovecraft afficionado's will tell you that any Nec. must
be a fake, since Lovecraft invented the whole idea in the first place. This,
besides being essentially correct, is absolutely irrelevant and useless
information. _All_ grimoires, and most holy books, are forgeries in some sense
of the word. Nobody believes that Solomon actually wrote any of the many Keys
that bear his name, for example, yet many of them claim his authority in no
uncertain terms. That the Simonite Nec. is a forgery in the sense of not being
_the_ Necronomicon should rather be regarded as almost a sort of seal of
authenticity, that it is intended to represent the work of a practicing
magician espousing the egregore of the claimed provenance for magical, rather
than literary, reasons.

Armchair magicians will tell you that it's not 'real' magic, of any bonafide
'tradition', and that it won't work, or if it did work, it would be Bad(tm),
or if it wasn't actually Bad(tm), it would be pointless. Anyone with some
small talent for magick who has seriously worked with Simon's material can
verify two significant facts: whoever wrote the thing had real and personal
experience of the ritual procedures and their effects _and_ did NOT include
every single, significant detail in the published account, as these will be
expected to vary with the individual operator. Most of the purely theoretical
'why' is also conspicuously absent. Filling in the missing bits, as must be
done with _any_ real grimoire, is a challenging and risky business, but not
without its rewards; knowing what's important only comes with experience.

Assyriologists and other academics will try to refer you to more reliable
sources of Akkadian religious and magical texts, and studies thereof. This
is fine and interesting as a side study in itself, but has absolutely
nothing to do with _using_ archaic religious motifs and symbols to explore
our own 20th Century psyche. Knowing, or knowing insofar as we might, what
a Babylonian mage might've thought about the Gate of Ganzir or Marduk's
many names is interesting, perhaps, but no place to start because _we're
not them_, at least not any more. But to wonder about the Igigi, and then
_go looking for Them_, is a magical approach to a magical problem, using
ritual tools which must be used to be understood or effective.

So we're back to asking your friend "For what?" and "Why?" There really are
easier ways of passing the time. };-]

93 93/93
Az0th

--
      I saw the lying spirits like frogs upon the earth, and upon
      the water, and upon the treacherous metal that corrodeth all
      things and abideth not. I saw Thee in these.
                                LIBER DCCCXIII VEL ARARITA - II:8.
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